Marijuana Activists Can Get A Lot Done When They Combine Forces
When I was at the SSDP Conference in Denver, I was lucky enough to sit in on a panel where Mason Tvert was explaining the strategy for Colorado’s ‘Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol’ initiative. He pointed out that, as with any campaign, there are essentially three groups of people. On one side of the spectrum you have people that are going to vote against legalization no matter what. On the other side you have people that are going to support legalization at the ballot box no matter what.
In the middle of the spectrum are undecided voters. These voters have mixed feelings about marijuana reform. On one hand they were told their whole lives that reefer madness is real, and that marijuana is bad. But on the other hand, they see that marijuana prohibition is a failed policy, and that in this economic crisis, we need to focus our resources where they are best utilized. Most of these people only need one other person to come and tell them that they are not alone in their frustrations, and they will go from being undecided to voting for marijuana reform.
Mason Tvert was explaining that the Colorado campaign has identified tens of thousands of people that fit the ‘undecided voter’ description. Their plan is to divide that amount of people by 420 to determine how many people 420 activists can reach. The math is really staggering when you break it down. Not all activists can reach a lot of people due to resources and geographical location. However, there are quite a few people that can get out there and reach people. If 420 activists each reached 125 undecided voters, that would be a total of 52,500 people that were possibly influenced into either voting when they weren’t planning on it, or to get off the fence and support marijuana reform. That’s significant!
Are you willing to be one of those 420 people in Colorado? What about outside of Colorado? Imagine if we had 420 activists doing this in every state? What about 4,200? Or 42,000 (might be hard in Wyoming)? If I told people at the beginning of this article that 420 people could win an election you would have told me to retake my college math courses. However, when you realize what can happen if everyone banded together and did their part, you see that 420 people can do quite a bit. Now consider how many elections were lost or won by 52,500 votes or less…Are you seeing what I’m seeing?
This 4/20 I challenge all readers to contact 125 people, whether you have 419 friends joining you or not. Call someone from a call bank. Stand with a sign in a high traffic area. Tell your family, friends, and co-workers that don’t know what’s going on in the world of marijuana reform. If everyone did their part, marijuana prohibition would end faster, and the world would be a better place!
